Teaching Activities for Grandparents and Their Grandchildren: Stay Cool – Weather-wise and Temper-wise

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This tiger picture has really resonated with us and our grandkids to help us remember that – Love is not easily angered! So fun for our 1 Corinthians 13 – Love is always patient and kind series. That doesn’t mean, of course, that those angel grandkids of ours don’t sometimes forget and have a temper flare up. To be honest, if you are driving with me and someone cuts me off, I’m afraid I’d have to confess I don’t usually sit there with a sweet smile on my face and a halo over my head. I’m really working on that though – for both them and me. 🙂 And hopefully, this fun photo and some of the activities for grandparents and their grandchildren that are following, will help you and me both!

It’s hot right now. In fact, where I live, it’s REALLLLLLY HOT right now! That means tempers are even more likely to spark and we all have less energy to work on fun projects, even with the air conditioning cranked up high! BUT now is the perfect time to do it, for all those reasons, so I thought I’d look for easier and cooler projects for us this week, starting with a couple of movies. We can sit and cuddle, watch a cute show or two, and enjoy ice water, chips, and each other’s company.

For the younger grand-set, I always love the Christian childrens Hermie and Friends DVDs. Antonio Meets His Match and To Share or Nut To Share are both good ones for watching and seeing how to – and NOT to – deal with anger.

The Karate Kid is one of the hot new movies right now. I am, personally, NOT recommending this movie for young children. A friend and I went to see it. We did enjoy it over all, however we both agreed it was quite intense. I was actually surprised to discover it is rated PG instead of PG-13! The first half hour + has several graphic scenes of bullying older children beating up the young, 12 year old star – a lot! However, that being said, I know many of our grandkids will see it. If they have, it can be used as an excellent tool for discussing anger, how to be angry and not sin, how to deal with problems with friends, etc. If they have seen and liked the original Karate Kid, the same is true for that and they might enjoy watching it again. (Such is my Karate Kid review :))

With the Barnes and Noble Summer Reading Programs activities for grandparents and their grandchildren, reading a book together that brings this up can be a great “multi-tasking” option for us. Educational, character-building, and earning a new book. Terrific! Little Women and Little Men are classics that both have opportunities to point the way to dealing with anger appropriately vs. inappropriately.

For younger children, there is a gorgeously illustrated book, Bible Verse ABC’s with the CobbleKids, that puts a Bible verse to the different letters of the alphabet. It is all positive character traits so it doesn’t mention anger directly but points to the positives including:

• Roman 13:3 Do what is good
• James 1:2 Consider it all joy
• 1 Corinthians 13: 4 Love is patient, love is kind
• Galatians 5:22 The fruit of the Spirit

Speaking of this summer’s Bible memory verses series, Love is, and last summer’s, The Fruit of the Spirit, here’s another song for children (and all us granny nannies and pappies who love fun camp-style songs!!! :)) And yes, this is definitely one of those special and fun Christian songs my grand children and I absolutely loved singing together! It focuses on the fruit of the Spirit but since both sets of Bible verses are excellent for children and overlap wonderfully, I think it’s also quite appropriate for this series.

Gary Strickland – a talented musician, actor, singer, author, and more – who’s almost in the never-aging Baby Boomers Generation, wrote it for his church’s summer camp and we’re so glad he did. And, be sure to read his story about his elderly mother. It brought sweet tears to my eyes as I saw his goals so wonderfully matched ours – to make every moment of our life count as we deal with the Sandwich Generation issues of life, caring for elderly parents and doing fun activities like these with our grandkids! 🙂